"O daughter of Zion, let thy tears flow like rivers day and night"--so the Jews lamented--"give thyself no rest. The kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world would not have believed that the besieging army could have entered into the gates of Jerusalem. Jehovah hath cast off his altar, and abhorred his sanctuary. The stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street. The Lord hath thrown down from heaven to earth the beauty of Jerusalem, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger. He hath poured out his fury like fire upon the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion.[662] The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground and keep silence; they cast dust upon their heads; they are girded with sackcloth. The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the earth. They that go by strike the hands together, and shake the head over the daughter of Jerusalem. Is this the city which was called the garland of beauty, the joy of the whole earth? Thy enemies shoot out their lips at thee; hiss and say: We have swallowed her up: this is the day that we looked for; we have done it. The gates are desolate; the ways to Zion mourn; no one cometh to the festival. Behold and see, all ye that pass by, if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow.[663] Our possession is fallen to strangers, our houses to aliens; we are orphans without a father; our mothers are like widows. Servants rule over us; they weaken our wives and virgins: they hang up the captains: they honour not the faces of the elders; we have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold to us. The young men grind the mill-stones, and the children fall under the wood.[664] The punishment of my people is greater than the punishment of Sodom.[665] All mine enemies rejoice at my trouble, and laugh at my overthrow, but thou, Jehovah, will bring the day when they will be as I am; do to them as thou hast done to me.[666] Our fathers have sinned and are not; we have borne their iniquities. Take us again to thee, Jehovah; is it right that thou shouldest utterly throw us away and be so wroth with us?"[667] Jeremiah was still a prisoner in the court of the citadel when the Chaldæans forced their way into it. With the rest of the inhabitants of Jerusalem he had been taken to Ramah, in order to be carried away into Babylonia from thence, when Nebusaradan, at the command of Nebuchadnezzar, to whom in the interim Jeremiah's conduct must have been known, caused his fetters to be taken off, and gave him the choice whether he would remain or go to Babylonia. It was in his power to go where he would: if he went to Babylonia he would not be neglected there. Jeremiah answered that he wished to remain in the land. Nebusaradan then gave him maintenance and a present, and put him in the hands of the viceroy, Gedaliah, to convey him to his house at Anathoth.